D. Michael Abrashoff

More thoughts on my April 25 post on behavioral economics and behavior change. This gets to the nub of what I want this blog to be (mostly) about.

Randy Cohen‘s anecdote made me think of another that appears in my no-question favorite management book: “It’s Your Ship,” by D. Michael Abrashoff. The story is about the owner of an industrial repair shop who kept his tools in a tool-issue room to avoid theft and losses. He paid the custodian of the tool-issue room $35,000 a year (this was c. 1990), and his workers spent part of their day standing in line to check tools in and out. So the owner did away with the tool issue room. No more lines. And over the next year, he spent only $2,000 to replace tools.

As Abrashoff puts it, a “lack of trust was costing him money.”

Bingo. Beware of the processes that get in the way of compliance. Beware of bureaucracy that takes the name of compliance but really has nothing to do with your company staying on the right side of law and ethics, because that busy-work only makes your team resent your legitimate compliance efforts. And beware of processes that may be contrary to your tone at the top.

There are things you’ve got to button down in tight processes, like, say FCPA compliance. Then there are areas where clearly and repeatedly communicating a vision and mission — and not contradicting them with your actions – goes a long way. (Balance. An obvious point, right?)

And let me take this moment to give a fan’s rave to Abrashoff’s book. It’s the story of his time as captain of a US Navy destroyer, and how he used simple, commonsense trust and communication — treating his sailors as he would expect to be treated– to lead it to excellence. I’ve lead companies or business teams for more than 20 years of my career, and I’ve read a lot of management books — this is the one that, as I read it, I kept nodding my head. “Yes, that’s right!”, I kept saying. (I got real annoying to my family about it.) And there’s no diluting his approach by saying that a commercial executive can’t enforce the order and discipline that a military leader can; as Abrashoff notes, he was the ultimate middle-manager — with ranks of superiors above him and an immense bureaucracy surrounding him.

This book also carries an interesting history, to me, anyway. It was published in 2002, but demand made it disappear from book store shelves overnight in the fall of 2007, when it was mentioned on Monday Night Football as the inspirational leadership guidance for Bengals QB and Captain Carson Palmer.